and how do they go about it are there modern day treasure maps where x. really marks the spot i've been in mine shaft scarred the secrets of gemstones still buried deep beneath the earth. the border between europe and asia the word girls men belt an old turkey and a chain of precious and semiprecious stone deposits that follows the mountain range for hundreds of kilometers from north to south has long been known as the gemstone belt of the. heart of the gemstone delta some eighty kilometers north of yucatan the landscape is dotted with defunct pits. anatoly in a forest ranger lives in a log cabin near the abandoned simeone in sky a mine shaft which was famous for its rich deposits in the nineteenth century.

can be found here. crystal and more able. to copper wires bend at the right angle and placed inside metal tubes point to a gemstone vein. this may be geological prospecting on the cheap but it's a method that's reefed great rewards for some practitioners. look the part that means the vein runs somewhere from the northeast. to southwest. the soon as we move away from the vein they go back to their initial position. here they tell us there are lots of veins there all over the place here's another one and. as soon as we move away they go back to their initial position i think the energy coming from the people in the earth's magnetic field play a part in this when you go along a vein come across

a hollow where the sticks cross over each other like this. what we don't know is the. way. to get closer to the contacts this is where the thing comes close to the surface. where you won't find anything but splinters through. three diggers are looking for blue aquamarine crystals in an old pit looking for gems as these diggers way of life many of them do it as a sideline but some are full time professional. here it gets out of the surface. in the old days. right here. just now. they know what to do and their intuition helps dave determine the veins

direction and now they're trying to break through to it as they remove a pile of stones. there are some pretty big chunks here. we examine them. and break them up. there must be some crystals in the. blue crystals inside milk white cts thick and sticky substance these aquamarine are not used for jury they're mainly for collectors if you diggers patient and lucky enough you might find something like this. all of these miners are certain they'll hit their streak of luck some day and many been seek support from the mistress of the copper mountain. local people regard the patron saint of diggers. she appears as a magical lizard wearing a golden crown. my dear kind lady to you in

all humility with an open heart not with evil folds please give me a nice stone don't leave me out to dry help me find the church stone first i was skeptical about it but when i try there's a soul that had worked. this stretch of highway follows an underground strip of rock packed with emeralds beryl and alexandra. emerald banda some thirty kilometers wide and about two kilometers in length this is the birthplace of geologist. emeralds are the main line of his research. from time immemorial people here have literally been sitting on them or some of the veins are forty to fifty meters below ground a long time ago the french dug for emeralds and beets they used to be nearby you might say people are walking on emeralds but you can see for yourself.

i these swampy banks of the river produced a geological sensation in the early nineteenth century. but he says in one thousand one stumbled on pale aquamarine colored stone. he took them to your concert in boric where scientists said they were emeralds in the summer of eight hundred thirty one emeralds were found right here on the banks of this river and exactly in first bits these unique emeralds were found. jim stone experts regard emeralds found in the urals is the best in the world they use a special scale to assess the color and transparency of a stone but there's another special quality of these your old chum stones that won't appear on any scale you know did they see them a little of the supposed to be a green color i will create a look at this one you see a trace of blue in that this means they come from a pit yes there is

a blue streak tells you that they were dug out from. the village of mali the emerald capital of the year old it's seen better days beryl was produced here in the soviet era a strategic material used in nuclear reactors before the early one nine hundred eighty s. it was mined in an open pit later an underground mine was built on the site. post parents live in militia. his father is a mining engineer he spent a lifetime working in the chefs. with the. produce a more strategically important enterprise. in those days. were just a byproduct so to speak the break up of the soviet union and the economic downturn that followed in its wake eventually brought production to a halt demolish if pit has been closed since one thousand nine hundred three its equipment is gradually falling into disrepair only heavy duty pumps are still in

operation pumping out subterranean water from the pit. scientists say some seven hundred kilograms of emeralds valued at twenty four million dollars could be produced here each year but the pit remains closed meanwhile law enforcement officials say that up to fifteen thousand carats of your all emeralds are illegally traded annually supplied by informal miners who take emeralds from wherever they can find them most often it's from garden piles of refuse and abandoned mine shafts . files you see in the background have been flushed only once but second flushing will reveal that the roskilde gemstones their so called crude crystals that. these waste piles have been flushed three times but they no longer belong to anybody some call them the miracle field others the field of fools if. you want to know why the place has this name anyone without special qualifications can find gems there would

be the envy of any collector now here's a valuable stone. it seems to be a bare ileum crystal it doesn't look too good as it's covered with dust and claims the bulk of. it isn't fact an emerald in accordance with international close if occasional. but here in the urals is just called the emerald green or. some jewelry firms indian ones in particular are only too ready to buy such cheap stones they're specially treated and then resold at the price of emeralds. aleksandr cell of ana fizzed generally recognized as an expert on the certification of emeralds and other precious stones the certificate guarantees that the customer is not buying so-called refined beryllium or to put it plainly fake emeralds. emeralds are a variety of. they only different color. painting radioisotopes and other

methods will change their color. has set up a certification center in the town of study and. in addition he's founded a private museum of minerals and jewelry complete with gem cutting workshops. cutting alone produces unique gems from emeralds and more modest semi-precious stones like topaz amethyst and other colored crystals. each gemstone splinter or even a plain looking one is given a new lease on life important as well as local stones are cut here but local stones no matter how plain they might be are dearer to the master's hearts. closer to the soul. because the. front of the museum. visitors are immediately drawn to. chunks

of greenish. it stands as a monument to the locals love. the

old village at the very center of the year. and a long time ago women and children used to wash. stones at the cattle's watering hole today college undergraduates would be geologists come here from moscow each summer to get hands on training they stay at the house which once belonged to a local priest alexander is

a prospector with years of experience. he takes the students on a guided tour of an old quarry tells them about the nuts and bolts of his job. they go to a place where piles of pink. covered a hundred years ago and where nickel was produced in the soviet. show me. you can see right through it but it's. the students look like seasoned diggers says they flush the rock hunting for beautiful stones fires anyone with enthusiasm once they get their hands

a bit dirty. the students and their professors in the praise of the professional digger. this is a captivating and useful experience they feel more confident this is obvious even from the way they move about the skills they get here in the classroom. only through personal contacts that each small find is a delight for them like a valuable gift in a different sacks full of much bigger trauma lines were hauled from here to village fairs it's impossible to estimate how many of these were incinerated in to produce nickel. there. oh yeah it's real big family well worth the effort. now there's a praiseworthy stone. well more or less how are we going to divide them among us.

from time to time the pit steep sides reveal gemstone outcroppings this dangerous rift was discovered only a few years ago diggers got away with the crystals in no time but they were at risk of being buried alive in a massive landslide it is impossible to let's get in there to see if anything is left of the vein. ok for you pena you stay put for a while. sometimes people do get inside the vein this is dangerous. numerous gemstone pits are scattered in the forests around the village but few people know where gemstones were mined in the old days. going to them it was here that this trench here is for exploration he would accuse the merchant workmen mind it's of the beauty they were after told beryl they were only the top layer there are several pits here it would fit you thirty to forty

percent of them and certainly not more than fifty percent have been worked out there and they would be down there. a mill that belong to the merchant who own the pits stood here by the riverside a long time ago stories of treasures are well known but all that remains of the miller wall fragments and old grindstones lying in the grass the mill produced more than simple flour. here is his silver mill it made flour but they also can the hope of finding gold in it is there and they mined stones in these pits or ancestors did work hard. well then the stones had a heart of value they worked like titans and they got paid for the jolt of their work it was well compensated. nearly every village and the chance to build

one or two more shops handling semiprecious stones most of the people working in cramped conditions using more now obsolete equipment are self-taught craftsmen. these workshops are anything but cost effective they can survive because marginal people don't stay long. it's not an easy job if you're doing it you've got to look at a new booth as you can't give it up just like that when the stones are like little kids when you first hold them in your hands they're rough but you know what you need to work and polish them and only then did they look so much. these my kids polished and sparkling with you looking modeless. several times a year stone cutters come to you considering board to attend

a fair featuring serpents a night rode a night jasper cornelian and many more their wares reflect the whole spectrum of semiprecious stones found in the urals these are pieces of art made from landscape jasper from the southern year olds and these are all lumps of rock crystal from the northern end of the same mountain range. other tables display deskilling jewelry from the traditional ural school most of the masters and diggers have known one another for years there aren't that many new faces. only a handful of. work with local stones everybody is trying to make goods for popular consumption. there's a brisk trade in melaka where firms that year at the fair the euro master scoffed at african malakai because of its banal striped pattern. that used to be mined in the euro's is only found in museums. deposits have been completely exhausted.

what do people take home from the urals gemstones jasper and now a kind of those are the stones they so shape with are original but this malecon is from africa most people are well aware of the fact they're still willing to buy an . artist a lego pile of cards flowers from stone he matches and with this petals with leaves made of nephrite nephrite leaves look exactly like the real thing pots and all. tiny silver pins are used to hold parts of the flower together because the glue doesn't last long alone the flower itself is more durable and it can never weather . the light radiates through its petals and the flower seems alive but looks are deceptive as the lifeless flower is hard and cool to the touch. stone as. if it doesn't feel like being

a flower it's going to be one in the beginning on made several attempts to tame stones but nothing came of it. as a result i had a whole bucket of stone flows and leaves only then did i realize that stones could never be time. on display at the museum of stone. collector owns these pieces. his collection isn't limited to. he's devoted a lifetime to it. around the world recognize that his unique. have helped him set up a museum of his own. how to master more than two thousand items i realize that this fine collection should belong to my hometown and everybody must have a chance to see it's. not only his own right widely

known in the. his home collection is nothing spectacular but each item reveals a bit about him. just look at these sugar like crystals. very unusual. and this is an image that's jim. out in the open. i talk to these colored quartz and. they're really wonderful they help me forget any problems or misfortune. with. many of these stones were mind at the same place where the legendary mining engineer didn't have found gemstones one hundred years ago academics went to for advice and he made great contributions to geology though he never revealed all his secrets or he was the

first and only one to find. you found force twelve carrots. just couldn't find a single one in many years until a ship shy of devoted himself to studying old maps and the legacy of past mining engineers by retracing their forgotten paths. there are no records of the legacy of our ancestors none what nothing about pits that's all. until issued shy of joining city give a look and director of the rez have mineralogical reserve on frequent visits to the pits to assess their deposits. exploring the pits is going to require a lot of digging. there's nothing but barren rock here no crystallization. there's something to the left.

if we have to find some big samples. ok let's get on with the job. diggers rely on telltale signs rather than intuition they know that if they don't see such signs there's no point in messing about in that vein here is a very thin vein it's center than your little finger there will be a bulge but make no mistake about it where it joins the torch vein over there. crystals all over the place i'm telling you. this pit was once thought to be empty but there are still some treasures to be found if the crystal is flushed and polished it will begin to sparkle. should be done very carefully if you've got clever fingers you'll make a nice brooch very beautiful. science is yet on ravel all the

mysteries of the gemstone belt. researchers studying old gemstone pits mapped them according the accounts of pioneers who often refused to disclose all of their secrets. don't believe in mysteries a mystery is simply something you don't know a good miner has no secrets except a place where he's working. there are many pits to be found in the gemstone. but their contents remain unknown. nobody knows. day in and day out they go from one pit to another driving an all terrain vehicle through the forests where their forefathers also mind. the secrets of old miners are being put back on the maps the same units guy a pit is a case in point it's gemstone deposit as not been exhausted. the winch is

still in good order the pain has not even peeled off on the rope remained from the soviet times he's still finding. all we need to do is to put the engine. as soon as the engine is here the winch will start working. it was forty meters deep when a large nast of crystals was found at a depth of only fourteen meters. this means that the vein has good prospects because apparently they were planning to mine stones at a lower level. if the t.v. is to be restored and made up this will require knowledge label at least one hundred million roubles but it's not yet clear who will furnish that kind of capital. if water is pumped out miners could regain access to shafts that produced riches for over a hundred years lying deep beneath the earth's surface gemstones are just waiting

for someone to rediscover their unique beauty. every month we give you the future we help you understand how we'll get there and want to bring the best in science and technology from across russia and around the world join us acknowledging update on r g. more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china corporations are today.

a twelve year old a russian boy returns home after being allegedly sold for drunks his adoptive parents loved him and he could mimic and republic where he was put in an orphanage after neighbors reported that he was being abused he will now undergo a medical examination and get help and ducting to life in moscow. ukraine's constitutional court rules that certain powers must return to the president it means president viktor yushchenko which will now be able to choose his own prime minister and government the court decided that reforms made in the wake of the two thousand and four orange revolution were illegal. and one russian firm wants to mix business with pleasure in outer space it plans to open a commercial space station conducting experiments for companies while also

attracting tourists like twenty sixteen designers also hope it can be used as a safety case of emergencies on the international space station. and in just about a minute peter lavelle's cross-talk guests debate whether venezuelan president hugo chavez is a dictator or a democrat it's just ahead after a quick break.